Theater review: Cold War tensions get personal in RVP's 'Lies'

IMAGINE HOW disturbing it would be to discover that your best friends are not what they seem — that, in fact, they are agents for a geopolitical enemy sworn to destroy your nation's way of life. That's the conundrum faced by Bob and Barbara Jackson, a pleasant and unpretentious couple living in London in the early 1960s, when Cold War tensions were at their peak.

It was a time of constant military buildup, intermittent threats and confrontations, and nonstop games of cat-and-mouse among spies and double agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The fanciful lore of Ian Fleming's James Bond thrillers and all the imitators that they spawned came from real people and real situations of the time. Full of outsized characters and outlandish cliff-hanging danger, few examples of the genre examine in any detail how espionage might have affected ordinary people.

Now at Ross Valley Players, Hugh Whitemore's "Pack of Lies" does this perhaps better than anything else written about the period. Based on a true story, and adroitly directed by Molly Noble, the play depicts the Jacksons' warm friendship with Peter and Helen Kroger, an American couple pretending to be Canadian living across the street. Barbara (Tina Taylor) and Helen (Mary Ann Rogers) have a particularly close relationship. The timid Englishwoman is dependently fond of the brash and uninhibited Helen, who despite her affinity for alcohol and raucous parties never reveals a hint of her secret life. Their husbands (Malcolm Rodgers as Bob; Craig Neibaur as Peter) are friendly in a manly, unemotional mid-century style.

Peter works at home at an unexplained occupation — a circumstance far less prevalent then than now — and enjoys classical music and high-fidelity audio, a hobby popular among engineering types. This lifestyle tidbit proves more than interesting for a Scotland Yard detective named Stewart (Steve Price), who begins to pester the Jacksons with questions about their neighbors. He moves a couple of girls (Melanie Bandera-Hess as Thelma; Livia Demarchi as Sally) into the Jackson home to act primarily as full-time observers and secondarily as emotional support for the fragile Barbara, whose inability to resolve the conflict between emerging evidence about the Krogers' actual agenda and her palpably real friendship with Helen leads to a breakdown. A secondary plot involves the Jacksons' sometimes difficult relationship with their adolescent daughter, Julie, confidently played by Tess O'Brien.

Periodically, the actors step out of the scene to address the audience directly, providing biographical details that enhance their characters or adding texture to what proves to be an amazingly compelling story. All the action plays out in the Jacksons' middle-class home, convincingly realized by set designer Ron Krempetz and set builder Ian Swift. Like the set, the actors' mannerisms and attitudes are authentic — this, according to a seatmate who grew up in Cold War London.

Sound designer Billie Cox keeps the audience solidly in the early '60s with a few well-chosen snippets, but the show could benefit from more of them. The Cold War may have been a dreadfully foreboding time for cross-political friendships, but it was a tremendous time for jazz and pop music.

But no matter. RVP's "Pack of Lies" is only partly about the culture and conflict of the time. At its core is a universal story about the mutual affection of two women, despite external realities that have thrown them together. For those in the audience who haven't read the playbill, it unfolds as a mystery; for those who have, it's more a psychological thriller. In either case, it's an enlightening glimpse into the private lives of people who were at the center of one of the longest-running ideological conflicts in history.